


At the Roots

by SerenLyall



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M, Off-screen torture, seriously guys heed the "graphic depictions of violence" warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 10:05:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12230685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SerenLyall/pseuds/SerenLyall
Summary: The trees shiver and shake, and Kathryn and Chakotay nearly die a hundred untold deaths.





	At the Roots

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for round one of Talsi's J/C Cutthroat Competition!
> 
> The prompt I used for this fic was the following:  
> https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/331554809935036417/335378233207947266/unknown.png
> 
> Again, I'll reiterate the warning for the off-screen torture and graphic depictions of violence. It's not super graphic or bad on my scale (Helen rated it a 5), but I also know it proved disturbing to others. So if gore and violence bothers you, you might want to take a pass on this one.
> 
> I hope you all enjoy, though! And I'd love to hear your thoughts!

How they crowned you  
Weighted and drowned you  
How they made you numb  
No bandage around you  
I've found and unwound you  
Now how to make you run

-The Clock at the Back of the Cage: Amanda Palmer & Edward Ka-Spel

 

**At the Roots**

They dance beneath the stars on their wedding night.

Chakotay had asked that they be married outdoors. Kathryn, who had long ago stopped dreaming of what her wedding would look like, had agreed without discontent. He had kissed her when she said yes, lying lazily in bed as the sunlight played across their bare skin—a mirror image to the moment he had asked her to marry him.

"Marry me," he had said, one uncertain morning. The sun had been fitful that day, sliding in and out of clouds to bathe the world beneath with shifting shadow and dancing light. The sun had been out when he asked it, and they had been lying tangled together in their shared bed beneath the bay windows in Kathryn's apartment.

"What?" she had asked, turning and propping herself up on one elbow to look down at him.

Chakotay looked at her long and hard, his dark eyes swimming with unspoken emotion. "Marry me," he said again.

Kathryn had been still for a moment. But then, slow and careful, she gave a nod. "Okay," she said.

"You're sure?" Chakotay asked. He looked at her as serious as he ever had. "I don't want to pressure—"

"I'm sure," Kathryn had said, cutting him off, serious and eternal, her eyes as deep as a drowning man. She had leaned down then and pressed her lips to his in a long kiss. "I'm sure," she had whispered again against his skin.

They were married at the end of summer, when the first taste of fall crept along the avenues of the wind. The trees were just beginning to turn yellow and scarlet at their edges, and the air was warm but not hot. The sun shone bright and gold, honey-sweet as it fell to the earth far below in thick rays, gilding leaf and flower and blade of grass in shimmering light.

It was a grand affair. The Darling of the Delta Quadrant was marrying her fine former first officer. The tabloids spent the week preceding it trying to catch glamour shots, hunting Kathryn at work, stalking Chakotay at the Academy to ask him question after question. Nog, Kathryn's assistant, spent as much time retorting tartly to nosy reporters as he did managing Kathryn's calls and memos.

The wedding itself was held high in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The altar stood at the base of a rocky monolith, and the meadow that sprawled out before it was dotted with wildflowers. Wooden chairs had been transported in for the attendees, and tables laden with sandwiches and pastries and punch were arrayed beneath the pines. The air was cool and sweet, the sky brilliant blue and filled with laughter and joy.

Nearly a thousand people attended the ceremony. The entirety of the  _Voyager_  crew came, as did the entire admiralty and half of the captains stationed on Earth, as well as all of Kathryn's and Chakotay's families. More besides showed up, drawn by the prospect of watching the Wedding of the Century, as the tabloids called it. Mike Ayala was Chakotay's best man; Phoebe Janeway was Kathryn's maid of honor.

"I love you," Chakotay said at the end of his vows. And smiling, his eyes warm and alive, he added, "Always have, always will."

~*x*~

"I love you," Chakotay whispers into Kathryn's hair. "Always have, always will."

Kathryn, unconscious, does not respond.

She lays shivering against him, half-naked, body broken, unconsciously trying to stifle her groans of pain. Her breath comes in strangled, hiccuping sobs. Chakotay holds her as gently as he can, mindful of the way the left side of her chest is caved in, of the deep, weeping lacerations on her back and sides. Her left leg, broken in at least two places, lies elevated atop Chakotay's unmangled knee.

They had brought her in bloody and half dead after what felt like an agonizing eternity. Chakotay had crawled to her, shattered left knee dragging across the floor, and had wrapped his jacket around her limp and unresponsive body. She had not moved, even as he settled down onto the floor behind her and drew her to his chest, couching her head—red and wet with fresh blood, the inch above her right ear soft to the touch—on his shoulder.

"I've got you," he had whispered into her hair.

She had woken twice since then, screaming and thrashing both times, words that Chakotay thinks are pleas dripping from between her teeth to pool alongside her blood on the cold, hard metal floor of their cell. Chakotay had held her, shushing her with his lips to her ear, murmuring quiet promises and quieter hopes.

"It's going to be fine," he told her once, twice, seven times. And also, "You'll be okay."

If she hears him, she gives no indication.

They come for her again the third time she wakes.

"Please," Chakotay begs, kneeling in front of her, hiding her half-naked form from sight. "Take me instead."

Their captors, all knobbly joints and protruding bones and bulbous eyes and gossamer wings, laugh at him in their high, chittering voices. They strike him to the ground and step over his prone body, grab her by the arms, and lift her screaming to her feet.

Through the red haze and dull ringing that stole Chakotay's senses at the end of their clubs, he thinks he hears her scream his name.

Then nothing.

~*x*~

She says his name over their console, soft and sweet and tempting.

Chakotay ignores her. He thinks that, if he looks at her now, he—and all the world around him—will break. It is too much, too much, too much, this dance of knowledge and half-truth, of whispers and dreams and glimpses caught by accidental purpose.

He does not think that, if he looks at her, he will be able to keep the bitter acid of recrimination that gathers beneath his tongue at bay.

She stands half an hour later and announces to the bridge that she will be in her ready room. She looks at him—and he feels her eyes on him, blue and cold and waiting, watching, maybe even praying—but he does not lift his head, does not meet her gaze.

If he does, he will shatter.

It will be three more days before he meets her eyes—three days and three nights, wherein he dreams and dreams again of her meeting the Devoran bastard in shadows and behind closed doors. He wakes in a cold sweat every time, the ghostly imprint of their meeting flesh playing and replaying across his skin as the air whispering from the vents chills him to the bone. He sees in his mind her cry of exultation—and wakes suddenly at the crescendo of it, shaking with the knowledge of what has been denied him and given to another.

"Chakotay," she says on the third day, and in her voice is a dead and withered hope.

He looks at her.

Her eyes are blue and cold and as dead as he has seen them—ice and slate and stone. She is pale and drawn, and her uniform hangs on her shoulders and from her ribs in an empty and hollow way. She has not been eating, Chakotay knows.

She reaches for him. Touches him.

Her hand is ice and ash, a question and a plea.

"Why?" Chakotay asks.

She shakes her head. "I don't understand," she says.

"Why did you do it?" Chakotay demands.

"Do what?" she asks.

"You know what."

She shakes her head again. "Please, Chakotay," she says.

Chakotay turns away.

"Chakotay!" she calls, and he hears her footsteps echo after him down the hall.

He does not turn.

~*x*~

"Chakotay."

His name on her tongue is a symphony, a sonata, a prelude. He rolls up onto an elbow and looks down at her, lying pale and naked between the sheets of his bed.

"Kathryn," he says, and leans down to kiss her. It is sweet, and close, and infinite, and Chakotay cannot breathe for the joy that burgeons in his chest.

After so many years of pain, of hardship, of separation, at last— _at last_ —she is here, in his bed and in his arms. He has dreamed of this moment for so long, yearned for it so completely, wished for it so purely, that as the sunlight plays over the skin of her shoulders and bathes her hair to amber, he can barely believe that it is no dream.

"I love you," Chakotay says, trailing a fingertip down her arm from shoulder to elbow. "I always have."

There is a moment of hesitation—and Chakotay wonders, and fears, and doubts—but then Kathryn sighs and curls close against him.

"I love you too," she says, quiet and soft and careful, and Chakotay feels the words against his breast, against his ribs, against his heart.

Chakotay settles back down to the pillow and wraps his arms around her, drawing her close. "I always have, you know," he says.

"Hm?" Kathryn asks, sleepy and wondering.

"Loved you," Chakotay says. "I always have."

"I doubt that."

"You doubt my honesty?" Chakotay asks.

"I doubt your memory," Kathryn says.

Chakotay laughs. "My memory is fine," he says.

"Hm," Kathryn says again.

Chakotay leans in and kisses her again. "Even when it was impossible," he says, pulling back just enough to look her in the eye. They are clear today, bright and blue and cloudless, and Chakotay cups her cheek with one hand, revels in the feel of her skin against his palm. "Even then, I loved you."

Kathryn shakes her head, but she does not argue.

"Don't you believe me?" Chakotay asks.

Again Kathryn shakes her head and remains silent.

"Kathryn?"

"It's just…" She trails off, and her cloudless eyes grow dim and dance with a badly healed pain.

"It's just what?" Chakotay prompts.

"It's nothing," she says, and she rolls on top of Chakotay, tugging the sheet out of her way so that she lies flush against him. "Show me you love me," she says against his lips.

Chakotay smiles. "Gladly."

~*x*~

"Gladly," Chakotay whispers. He draws her to him, touching her as gently as he can. She shudders beneath his touch, and he knows he must be hurting her—but her request still hangs in the air between them, small and plaintive in a way Chakotay has never heard before, and he finds he must obey.

 _Hold me,_  she said, and so Chakotay does.

There is a long moment of silence. She shudders, and he breathes, and fights the nausea that crawls at his throat, that sits acrid and sour beneath his tongue.

Her trembling strengthens, and her breath starts coming in fitful gasps. Chakotay smooths a hand across the back of her neck; it is miraculously untouched, but for the faintest whispers of bruises creeping up from the wounds on her back. She leans into his touch, needy and desperate, and whimpers low in her throat.

When the sound dies, so too does her breath.

"Kathryn?" Chakotay asks. Terror claws at him, climbing down from his heart to sit between his ribs, to gnaw at his throat, to cloud his eyes and ears with a grey, pounding haze. "Kathryn, please—no."

He pulls away, rolls her onto her back. She does not cry out, and Chakotay's terror rises to a new crescendoing peak.

"Kathryn!"

And still she is silent, unmoving. Her eyes are closed but for the faintest slits, showing only sickly, bloodshot white. Her lips are half parted, but when Chakotay lowers his ear to them, he can feel no breath against it.

"Kathryn, please," he begs.

He pinches her nose and lowers his mouth to hers, exhales long and deep into her lungs. Her chest rises—then falls beneath Chakotay's clasped hands. He feels bone grate beneath his palms, and he prays to any spirit who will listen that he will not kill her by trying to save her.

Once, twice, three times Chakotay breathes for her—and once, twice, three times she is only still. But then, at last, as Chakotay breathes again into her lungs, she gives a low, shattered groan and coughs wet and sticky blood onto her lips.

"Spirits," Chakotay breathes. He lifts her, cradles her against him, breathes in the smell of blood and sweat and fear and pain, and relishes in it.

She is not dead. She is alive—she is still with him.

"Spirits," he says again, and it is a prayer and a plea and a worship all in one. "Don't do that again."

Kathryn groans. "I'm sorry," she croaks. "I didn't mean—" She coughs again, and more blood dots her lips with scarlet.

"Hush," Chakotay murmurs. "Don't talk."

She falls silent and weak against him, and Chakotay tightens his grip.

"Don't leave me." Her words are a shock, and for a long second Chakotay thinks he must have imagined them—but then Kathryn whispers, "Please."

"Never," Chakotay says. "Never."

~*x*~

 _Never_ , Chakotay thinks.  _I never want to touch her again._

He is being melodramatic and jealous—two attributes which Chakotay has never liked in himself. But his gorge rises and his stomach clenches at the thought of touching the ghosts of Kashyk's fingers, of touching the same skin which has been claimed by Kashyk's hands and tongue.

_Why?_

The question plagues him, haunts him, trails his steps. He chases it, like a dog snapping for its tail, round and round and round in a never-ending circle. And still the answer eludes him, runs like silk through his fingers, like fog through his fists.

Why? Why would she choose Kashyk of all people? He was manipulative, controlling, overbearing; he was the antithesis of everything Chakotay tried to be.

Was she lying? And if so—to whom?

He still remembers those golden days on New Earth, when she had come to him and he had tasted her kiss and the feel of her skin warm against his. He remembers his joy, and remembers the feel of peace slowly blossoming within her. She had not said she loved him—had not echoed his words back to him—but in every touch, in every kiss, in every moment Chakotay had thought that the words grew within her, like a sapling toward the sun.

Had he been wrong about it? About her?

Was her peace with him a lie?

Or is it her joy with Kashyk that is the lie? Is she playing him as readily as it seems he is playing her?

The thought is a seedling of hope buried and lying dormant in Chakotay's chest. It is unwatered, and with every touch he sees pass between them, every whisper and breath shared, the seedling dies a little more.

And still, Chakotay cannot bear the thought of touching her.

 _Why?_  he asks her silently, again and again and again.  _Why?_

~*x*~

"Why?" Kathryn asks him. They are sitting beneath a tree in the park that surrounds Starfleet Academy, blanket spread across the grass, basket filled with food and drink sitting between them.

"Why what?" Chakotay asks around a mouth full of peanut butter and banana sandwich.

"Why me?" Kathryn asks. She fiddles with a blade of grass between her fingers, and her eyes are bright and piercing as she looks at him.

"Because I love you," Chakotay answers, somewhat taken aback. He had thought that answer was obvious.

"But why?" Kathryn asks. She laughs, but the sound is dark and derisive. "Why would you love  _me_?"

Chakotay feels the tingle of shock crawl into his fingers. Was she really so oblivious to her own worth? Did she really question his motives, and his meaning, when he said that he loved her?

"Because you're kind," Chakotay says. "And strong."

Kathryn frowns and opens her mouth to speak, but Chakotay holds up a hand to silence her.

"You're brilliant, and brave," he continues on, meeting her gaze and daring her to argue. "You fight for the weak."

"But I—"

"I'm not done, Kathryn," Chakotay cuts in.

Kathryn looks down at the kinked blade of grass lying now on her lap, and nods for him to continue.

"You're beautiful. Curious. Funny."

Kathryn looks up to meet his eyes through her lashes. Her look is one of uncertainty, of surprise, of emotions too tangled for even Chakotay to read.

"You're so many good things," Chakotay says

She plucks another blade of grass and tears it in half. "I'm not," she says softly.

"Why not?"

"The things I've seen—done."

Chakotay shakes his head. "You're a good woman, Kathryn."

"Only barely."

"Why this sudden uncertainty?" Chakotay asks.

"It's hardly sudden," Kathryn says. The piece of grass parts again before her fingernails. "It's just...good at hiding."

Chakotay frowns. This wariness, this anxiety, this hurt so suddenly apparent is so unusual that it pierces him down to the core. What could have caused it to surface today of all days? Should today not be happy? He had asked her just that morning to marry him—was she questioning her choice now, already?

"I don't like being so…" She trails off, fumbling for a good word. "So uncertain. So insecure."

Chakotay's frown lessens a degree. "I'm sure," he says. He finally dares to take another bite of sandwich. "You're hardly characterized by uncertainty."

A smile twists onto Kathryn's face. "When I need to be."

"Are you questioning your answer?" Chakotay asks.

"My answer?" she asks.

"To whether you'll marry me."

Kathryn shakes her head. "No. I'm not," she says, and Chakotay believes her. She shrugs, and then at last starts to eat her own sandwich, until now left untouched. "I wanted to make sure…" Again she trails off.

"Make sure of what?" Chakotay asks.

"That you understood."

"Understood what?" Chakotay prompts when again she falls silent.

"Who I am," Kathryn says.

"I know who you are."

"Then what you're getting into," she says.

"I do know," Chakotay says. He pulls the crust off of the last few bites of his sandwich and tosses them behind him for the squirrels he had seen earlier that afternoon. "Or else I don't care."

Kathryn looks at him for a long, hard moment. The leaves overhead rustle in a slight wind.

"I love you," Chakotay says, lacing every syllable with as much promise as he can. "And that won't change."

Kathryn nods. "Okay," she says. And at last she smiles.

~*x*~

 _Okay,_  Chakotay thinks, trying to calm himself.  _Check on her before you panic._

The aliens dragging her in drop her on the floor and leave her there. They turn and retreat from the cell with laughter and mocking regards.

Chakotay thinks she is dead.

He crawls to her unmoving body, rolls her onto her back, and prays harder than he has ever prayed before that she is not a corpse.

She coughs weakly, and a drop of blood beads at the corner of her mouth.

 _Thank you_ , Chakotay thinks to whatever spirits are guarding her.

They come for her again after less than an hour. It is the briefest respite they have given her yet.

Again Chakotay begs for them to take him in her stead. They laugh at him, and club him to the ground, and this time Kathryn is gone by the time he gains consciousness again. He feels the side of his head, feels the lump and the blinding pain, feels the softness of his skull—and he retches, bile splattering onto the floor, mixing with the bile and the piss already there. It stinks, and Chakotay retches miserably again.

When they bring her back again she is still conscious. When he sees her crying, small and weak tears that turn pink as they run through the blood coating her face, he almost wishes she wasn't.

"What happened?" Chakotay asks, once he has gathered her into his arms.

"I couldn't," she gasps, chokes, sobs.

"Couldn't what?" Chakotay asks gently.

"I gave it to them."

"What, Kathryn?" Chakotay asks, trying not to lose himself to the fear now crawling along his ribs.

"All of my codes," Kathryn says. She shudders, shivers, shakes and her tears grow weaker still.

"Oh, Kathryn," Chakotay murmurs. He kisses the back of her head, and holds her close. "It's okay."

Kathryn shakes her head. "No," she whispers, voice cracked and stitched together. "No…"

"Yes," Chakotay says. "Tuvok is wise." He kisses her head again, and runs the tips of his fingers over the back of Kathryn's unmangled left hand. It seems to soothe her; her sobs ease. "He'll know to change them."

But still Kathryn shakes. "Don't let them take me," she says, after a long silence. Her voice is little more than a murmur, and it is filled with pain and the promise of a death soon to come. "Not again."

"I won't," Chakotay promises. It is a lie, and they both know it, but Kathryn relaxes against him and after a moment, she falls asleep.

~*x*~

 _I won't,_  Chakotay thinks.  _I can't_.

There is anger in that thought, and resentment bitter and biting.

_Does she own your soul so completely?_

Kashyk is not the first one. He has seen her follow men before, on nameless planets of nameless people, has watched her fall into them. And every time they set Chakotay's teeth on edge; every time his resentment lurks, sour and black, and gnaws away at his ribs, at the small and fiercely cherished sapling that is the memory of when she allowed herself to be his. They are all big, and hard, and carry an air of control and brutality over their shoulders.

But still, Chakotay cannot stop himself from loving her.

Will not.

Cannot.

 _So why did she choose me?_ Chakotay wonders.  _Was it just that I was her only choice on New Earth?_

Day by day—with each passing moment that Kashyk remains in Kathryn's orbit, that she allows him to sink into her gravity—the resentment gnaws, and Chakotay wonders.

And then, at last, he is gone. Chakotay's resentment roars in righteous triumph at his betrayal, at the knowledge that he was as much a villain as Chakotay had dreamed. And Kathryn sits in his chair, her expression smooth as slate and as deathless as stone.

The sapling of Chakotay's hope flutters. Yearns. Strains toward her sun.

"Kathryn," he says—and she looks up at him from her seat in his chair, and there is something strange and unknowable in her face.

"Yes, Commander?" she asks, stiff and formal and pained.

Chakotay wants to say,  _I'm sorry._  Wants to say,  _I've been ugly._  Wants to say,  _My jealousy will kill me._

Instead, he says, "The crew needs their captain."

She looks up at him, looks down at the chair in which she sits, nods. "Indeed," she says, and stands.

She hesitates, their shoulders nearly brushing, and she turns to him.

"I'm sorry," she says.

Chakotay feels cold down to his core—feels like he is drowning in the wake of his jealousy, of his hate, of his anger.

 _I'm sorry,_  he tries to say in return. But the words stick in his throat and will not come.

~*x*~

"I'm sorry," Chakotay says with a laugh, and reaches across the table to wipe the icing from Kathryn's cheek. "I didn't expect it explode."

Kathryn lets him wipe the white icing off, and then rolls her eyes. "Don't fling the spoon around," she chastises.

Chakotay just laughs. "Your wish is my command," he teases.

The cake they are frosting sits on the large, worn table in the Janeway house's dining room. Five layers and as big as an antique car hubcap, it is one of seven that Gretchen Janeway has baked for the wedding. She had insisted on making each of the cakes with her own two hands, though she was content to allow the rest of the reception's food to be catered. As key members of the wedding, Phoebe, Mike, Kathyrn, and Chakotay had all been enlisted to help ice and decorate them.

"You two are insufferably cute," Phoebe says from the end of the table. She holds an icing tube in one hand, and her hands are liberally daubed with powdered sugar. As the resident artist, she has been selected to decorate the cakes.

"We try," Chakotay says cheekily.

Phoebe laughs, and aims the icing tube at him. Chakotay ducks and dodges around the table, snatching it out of her hands before she can fire.

"Children, please," Kathryn says with mock exasperation. She cannot help the wide smile that sprawls unchecked across her face, however. It is a wish for which she had never dared to dream, seeing her sister and the man she loves so readily getting along—getting along too well, she decides, as they both turn on her. Phoebe grabs her and holds her arms, while Chakotay squirts icing on her nose.

"Be careful," Mike calls from his end of the table. He has spent most of the time quietly trimming each layer of the cake with buttercream once the others are finished with their roles, watching and laughing at the antics of the other three. Out of a sense of self-preservation, Chakotay has refrained from making a comment about how funny it is to see a former Maquis standing in a Starfleet Admiral's house icing a wedding cake. "You are attacking an Admiral."

Outside, the last summer storm drops rain on the windows and tickles the trees into laughing dance. Thunder rumbles in the distance, low and echoing. Kathryn pushes Phoebe off of her, still laughing, and wipes the frosting off of her nose.

"You two behave," she orders.

"Yes ma'am," Phoebe says a little two smartly.

"Sorry," Chakotay says. He grabs her hand and pulls her into him, wrapping his arms around her waist. They stand like that for a moment, watching Phoebe and Mike return to their tasks. Chakotay presses his cheek to the side of Kathryn's head, and Kathryn clasps her hands over Chakotay's at her waist.

"This is nice," she says. There is a long moment of silence before she adds, "I never even dared hope…"

"That we'd see this?" Chakotay finishes when she trails off, lost for words.

Kathryn nods. "After everything we've been through." Again she trails off, and leans into Chakotay's chest. "Well."

"I know," Chakotay says.

And he does. It seems like no small miracle, seeing Mike standing at the Janeway table, seeing Phoebe laugh—holding Kathryn in his arms the day before their wedding. After all of the pain, the sweat, the death they have faced and overcome—the pain and sweat and death that consumed their lives until it seemed there was nothing else possible—it was a gift to be so happy.

Chakotay hoped he never took that gift foregranted.

"I love you," Chakotay says, and kisses the back of Kathyrn's head.

"I love you too," she says. She turns in his arms, and pulls his head down to hers for a kiss. "Forever and always."

~*x*~

"I love you," Chakotay whispers into Kathryn's hair. "Forever. Always."

She does not stir.

They had taken her twice since she had broken and given them her codes. Chakotay had asked both times what they wanted from her—but Kathryn would not say. She simply lay, weak and exhausted, in his arms, and had asked him to hold her. Every time she returned she did so with fresh wounds, with more damage wrought to her already dying body.

"You're going to kill her!" he screams at the aliens when they come to take her yet again. "What more do you want?"

They merely laugh, and kick him, and take her by the arms to drag her out.

This time, she does not return.

After what feels like an eternity, Chakotay hears footsteps on the ground outside of their cell. He pulls himself into a seated position, wary of his broken leg and broken ribs, and waits. Those that come are not, however, dragging Kathryn after them.

They open the cell door and pour into the small room. They laugh at the sight of him, and laugh at the sound of him when he demands to be told where Kathryn is. When he struggles to stand they lash out at his mangled knee, and Chakotay falls with a scream.

They do not speak as they surround him, nor as they pick him up with bony hands under his arms, but they laugh again as they drag him, thrashing, out of his cell.

"Where is she?" Chakotay demands once, twice, seven times.

"We bring you to her," the leader of the small group says at last, and then backhands Chakotay into silence. Blood drips from where the knuckle of the alien split his lip.

They drag him to what looks like a large cargo bay. One entire wall is open to space, the slight glimmer of a forcefield the only thing keeping them all from a fast but painful death. A shuttle, the same kind as the one that had transported Chakotay and Kathryn from the surface of the planet to their captor's ship, sits on the far end of the room, resting on three landing struts. On the opposite wall hangs shelves and racks containing large cannons, fragments of hull plates, construction and repair tools, and countless other things that Chakotay has no name for.

None of this is what captures Chakotay's attention, however. A metal cross has been erected against the near wall, one post soldered onto the other in the sick mockery of a growing tree's branches. And hanging from that tree is Kathryn, naked and bloody and barely breathing, barely conscious.

Chakotay screams. He thrashes against his captors' hold. They drop him, and Chakotay falls to the ground, hard, with a cry. He crawls forward, eyes only for Kathryn, ears only for the sound of her breath. Behind him, in the distance, he can hear the aliens laughing yet again—but none of that matters. The only thing that matters is reaching her, touching her, making sure she is still alive.

They catch him when he's a meter from the base of the cross. They lift him, with hands under his arms and under his knees, and carry him to a second cross lying flat upon the floor. They lay him down atop it, and stretch his arms out to either side.

"No." Her voice is weak and broken by screams. But again she whispers, "No."

They laugh at her, and taunt her in words that their universal translator will not translate. One grabs the whip from his belt and snaps it toward her unprotected belly. She screams when the braided thong strikes her skin, leaving a raised and bloody welt in its wake.

"Bastards!" Chakotay screams—only to feel the kiss of the whip against his cheek in retort. He chokes on his scream, blood welling and pouring into his mouth from the welt rising across his nose and right eye, which has nearly swollen shut in the seconds since the strike.

He hears her scream again, thinks he hears his name—but there is nothing in his head but the buzz of pain and the roar of scarlet fog.

Then hands on his wrists, and on his ankles. He feels the tip of a nail touch the inside of his wrist, the top of his foot. He braces himself for blinding pain—

The tingle of a transporter grabs him, and for an instant there is no pain. He is nothing, and everything, nowhere and everywhere.

He opens his eyes to  _Voyager_ 's sickbay, hears a voice he knows well. "Help her," he croaks—and then nothing.

~*x*~

 _Help her,_  a voice whispers in Chakotay's mind.

He long ago learned to listen to that voice. It was his inner voice—the voice of his innermost thoughts and beliefs, the one that his conscious mind could not reach; his grandfather had said it was the voice of the spirits speaking to him. Regardless of the source, however, it was a voice that had yet to guide Chakotay wrong.

 _Help her,_  it whispers again.  _She is hurting._

And so he goes to her.

"Come," she calls, when he rings the chime at the door of her ready room.

She is sitting at her desk, a stack of padds by her left hand, her computer open before her. She is pale and drawn, and Chakotay can tell by looking at her that she has drunk more coffee than usual.

"What do you want?" she asks.

Chakotay is taken aback by her abruptness, and by the hostility in her voice. He hesitates on the threshold—but then forces his feet forward. The door closes behind him.

"I just wanted to talk," he says.

"About what?" Kathryn snaps.

"About what happened with Kashyk."

"There's nothing  _to_  talk about," she says.

"I think you're wrong," Chakotay tells her.

Kathryn glowers.

"I also wanted to say…" Chakotay swallows thickly. It was never easy swallowing his pride. "I wanted to say sorry," he says. He takes a deep breath, flattens his palms against his pants, and forces himself to continue. "You are a grown woman—"

Kathryn's face hardens, and her eyes go dark.

"And you can bed whoever—" And again he chokes, and he feels a flush rise on his cheeks.

"I just don't understand," he says at last.

"Understand what?" Kathryn asks. Her voice is ice and death.

"Why you choose...well, them."

Kathryn's hard stare turns to a frown. "What do you mean?"

"Cold men," Chakotay says. "Cruel men."

"Like you said," Kathryn says, standing abruptly and leaning forward to place her hands flat on her desk. "I bed who I want."

Chakotay chokes on his tongue, on the sapling of hope that had grown up into his throat and already threatens again to wither. "I'm sorry," he says again.

"For what?" Kathryn asks, voice a growl.

"For everything." He takes a deep breath, and takes another step into her ready room. "For my jealousy, mostly," he says. His nails bite into the palms of his hands. "It's not fair of me."

Kathryn's expression softens ever so slightly. "Thank you," she says.

Chakotay tries to smile. He is uncertain of whether or not he succeeds. "If you need me," he begins—hesitates, wonders, questions if he should continue, if he has any right to this after the last couple of weeks. "Well, I'm here," he finishs, somewhat lamely.

"Thank you," Kathryn says again. This time, though, Chakotay thinks she means it.

He nods, and with that he turns, and leaves her alone in her ready room.

~*x*~

"Thank you," Kathryn says, and leans into Chakotay's chest.

"For what?" he asks.

"For everything," she says. "But mostly today."

Chakotay smiles, leans down, and kisses her. "I love you," he replies simply.

The guests have all left, and the takedown crew has come and gone. The meadow where Chakotay and Kathryn had been married is empty, only the trodden grass and crumpled wildflowers any indication that nearly a thousand people had, only hours earlier, flooded the area.

Chakotay and Kathryn had left at the end of the reception, transporting to the house in the Caribbean they had rented for their honeymoon. Once they were sure that all of the guests and the clean-up crew had left, however, they had returned like spies in the night. Both of them wanted to revisit this now-hallowed ground one last time.

The pines murmur in the wind, whispering restless secrets uncounted and untold. The air is cool and crisp, with the faintest taste of snow creeping at the edge of awareness. The night is full and heavy, happy, content, aware of the joy that had just been present.

"We made it," Chakotay says. Kathryn stands in his arms, and they dance slowly to the silent melody of the wind, of the earth, of the trees. "Through everything, we made it."

Kathryn nods against his chest. "We did," she says. She is in a simple dress, and the soft skirt whirls about her knees as she spins out and in again to Chakotay's arms. "Through death of every kind."

"We made it," Chakotay says again.

Kathryn pulls them to a stop, and she looks up into her husband's face. Chakotay smiles—and in her face he sees a reflection of his own joy, his own peace, his own hope.

"We made it," Kathryn echoes a final time.

And then, together, in joy and peace and hope, they dance beneath the trees under the stars.


End file.
